Monthly Archives: February 2018

“Strong is the new skinny” is just another number. A level of achievement. A nebulous idea of what “strong” can be with the accompanying visual garbage like #fitspiration. It’s like our thin obsessed culture says, “Look, shiny object to achieve!” But striving for strong (and what we see in those images: healthy/skinny/fit/able-bodied/light skinned/able to afford the gym, “clean food,” etc.) is a distraction from the real issue: our culture says fat folks (and all other marginalized/unseen groups) don’t matter.

In the not too distant past, holiday mint M&M’s and I were Netflix and chilling (like, in an actual chilling on the sofa way). Things were going well until the bag was gone. Love affair over. Mindless munching turned into a guilt mudslide of thoughts. My self-worth felt as depleted as a that family sized bag of candy.

​When I discovered yoga, I was deep in the throes of an eating disorder. I didn’t know it because I believed that what I was doing was healthy. It’s yoga. How can it be bad for you? Besides, I wasn’t binging as much. I wasn’t not eating. I was feeling less anxious, which for me, was an incredible blessing.

The style of yoga I chose was intense: hot, sweaty, fast, difficult…in front of a mirror. The style reflected a lot of how I lived my life: fast, always taking on challenge, always “busy,” consumed by body checking (the mirror, the scale, the pant size).

A lot of what I know now about yoga is this: don’t always pick the style that matches your personality. Intensity breeds intensity.